Sandra Langeslag, an associate professor and associate department chair in the Department of Psychological Sciences, is the latest guest on the Inside UMSL podcast.
Right when she was about to start her undergraduate studies in psychology in The Netherlands, Sandra Langeslag had her heart broken. A few months later, however, she fell in love again. Langeslag’s curiosity was piqued, and she often thought about what was happening in her body and brain to make her feel such strong emotions. For class assignments, she’d write papers about the neurobiology of love, which quickly helped her realize there was a paucity of scientific studies on romantic love.
Langeslag, an associate professor and associate department chair in the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, has now been studying how love impacts memory and attention for nearly 20 years. On the most recent episode of the Inside UMSL podcast, Langeslag shares how she first became interested in studying the brain through experiences of love and romantic relationships, as well as how she conducts her research and how she involves current students in theory creation and data collection.
In a conversation with host Nate Fleming, Langeslag dives into the different lines of her research, including how love improves cognition; how that, in turn, distracts people from doing other tasks; how people can change how in love they are by using cognitive strategies; and, finally, how love compares to drug addiction.
A joint initiative of the Office of Admissions and University Marketing and Communications, Inside UMSL features interviews covering innovative teaching, groundbreaking research, exciting extracurricular opportunities, athletics and other campus initiatives. The podcast launched earlier this year with an episode featuring Anita Manion, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, who also serves as a political analyst for KSDK (Channel 5).
New episodes of Inside UMSL are available monthly on the Inside UMSL podcast page or wherever you listen to podcasts.
